A se­nior ac­count­ing pro­fes­sion­al has been quizzed over his role in an on­go­ing case brought by the Sports Com­pa­ny of T&T Lim­it­ed (SporTT) against its for­mer board mem­bers in re­la­tion to a failed $34 mil­lion con­tract for the con­tro­ver­sial Life Sport pro­gramme. 

Price­Wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers (PwC) as­sur­ance part­ner Dwayne Ro­driguez-Sei­jas was in­ter­ro­gat­ed by at­tor­neys Jagdeo Singh and Anil Ma­haraj, who are rep­re­sent­ing four of the ex-di­rec­tors, as he took the wit­ness stand be­fore Jus­tice Ricky Rahim at Wa­ter­front Ju­di­cial Cen­tre in Port-of-Spain, Thurs­day morn­ing. 

In his tes­ti­mo­ny and cross-ex­am­i­na­tion which last­ed just over an hour, Ro­driguez-Sei­jas was ques­tioned over his ex­pert re­port on re­view­ing and in­ter­pret­ing the State com­pa­ny's fi­nan­cial records be­tween 2007 and 2015. 

Ro­driguez-Sei­jas not­ed that SporTT was not a "for-prof­it" com­pa­ny and had no loss­es or prof­its dur­ing the pe­ri­od. 

He al­so ac­cept­ed that it was fund­ed through gov­ern­ment sub­ven­tions and had loan fa­cil­i­ties. 

"My un­der­stand­ing is that ex­pens­es born by the com­pa­ny are fund­ed by di­rect fi­nanc­ing or gov­ern­ment grants," he said. 

Ro­driguez-Sei­jas ad­mit­ted that the fi­nan­cial state­ments pro­vid­ed lit­tle de­tails on two $17 mil­lion pay­ments made by the com­pa­ny to cov­er the con­tro­ver­sial con­tract. He ac­cept­ed that he did not in­de­pen­dent­ly ver­i­fy the source of funds for the pay­ments. 

"I did re­view the source doc­u­ments in­clud­ed in the wit­ness state­ments shared with me. I do not know if the mon­ey was paid out of a loan, or gen­er­al sub­ven­tion to the com­pa­ny," he said. 

He ac­cept­ed that if the gov­ern­ment act­ed as guar­an­tor for loans tak­en by the com­pa­ny, it (the com­pa­ny) had to abide by con­di­tions set by the gov­ern­ment for util­i­sa­tion of the funds ob­tained. 

Ro­driguez-Sei­jas ad­mit­ted that his re­port could have changed if he had ac­cess to sup­port­ing source doc­u­ments but claimed that he had to re­ly on the in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed to him.

"Fur­ther in­for­ma­tion could have led me to a fur­ther con­clu­sion," he said. 

In the law­suit, the com­pa­ny is claim­ing that its for­mer board act­ed neg­li­gent­ly and breached its fidu­cia­ry du­ty when it en­tered in­to the deal with eBeam In­ter­act Lim­it­ed to ad­min­is­ter the nu­mer­a­cy and lit­er­a­cy, and the in­ter­ac­tive tech­nol­o­gy com­po­nents of the oc­cu­pa­tion­al skills train­ing as­pect of the pro­gramme. 

The con­tract was even­tu­al­ly ter­mi­nat­ed af­ter eBeam al­leged­ly failed to meet its oblig­a­tions un­der it.  

The de­fen­dants in the case are for­mer chief ex­ec­u­tive John Mol­len­thiel, and ex-di­rec­tors Se­bas­t­ian Padding­ton, Chela Lam­see-Ebanks, Reynold Bala, Nor­ris Blanc, Nisa Dass, Anyl Gopeesingh, Sabre­nah Khayyam, Cheemat­tee Mar­tin, Matthew Quam­i­na, An­nan Ram­nanans­ingh, Kent Sam­lal, Harnar­ine Seer­am Singh, and Mil­ton Si­boo. 

They have de­nied any wrong­do­ing as they claimed that they act­ed on the in­struc­tions of the Min­istry of Sport and with the ap­proval of the Min­istry of Fi­nance. 

On Au­gust 22, High Court Judge Eleanor Don­ald­son-Hon­ey­well re­ject­ed SporTT's breach of con­tract case against eBeam but or­dered it to pay $30 mil­lion in resti­tu­tion as she ruled that it was un­just­ly en­riched for ser­vices it did not pro­vide.

While SporTT was seek­ing the en­tire val­ue of the con­tract, Jus­tice Don­ald­son-Hon­ey­well de­duct­ed $4 mil­lion, which rep­re­sent­ed the nom­i­nal ser­vices in­clu­sive of the pro­cure­ment of equip­ment pro­vid­ed by eBeam. 

"It would be legal­ly un­just for the De­fen­dant to re­tain the ben­e­fit of $34 mil­lion when on­ly min­i­mum val­ue, un­re­lat­ed to any sub­stan­tial de­liv­ery of the bar­gained for ser­vices, was re­ceived by the Claimant un­der the con­tract," Jus­tice Don­ald­son-Hon­ey­well said. 

"The min­i­mal ser­vices pro­vid­ed by the De­fen­dant did not mean­ing­ful­ly meet the ben­e­fit which was in­tend­ed by the par­ties to be de­liv­ered to the Claimant," she added. 

eBeam still has the op­tion to ap­peal the out­come. 

SporTT has con­tend­ed that the case against eBeam has no bear­ing on the par­al­lel lit­i­ga­tion against the group. 

The de­fen­dants are ex­pect­ed to be­gin to take the wit­ness stand and be cross-ex­am­ined when the case con­tin­ues to­day. 

Col­in Kan­ga­loo, SC, John Lee and Stephanie Moe are rep­re­sent­ing SporTT. 

The group's lawyers in­clude Fyard Ho­sein, SC, An­tho­ny Vieira, SC, Rishi Dass, SC, Shiv Shar­ma, Ka­ri­na Singh, Ke­ston Lewis, Roger Kawals­ingh, Ravi Mungals­ingh, Tara Bhar­ios­ingh,  Nicole de Ver­teuil-Milne, Adri­an Ra­moutar, Sush­ma Gopeesingh, Kami­ni Per­saud-Maraj, Neil Bis­nath, Ly­dia Men­don­ca, Richard Ja­gai, An­drea Bhag­wan­deen, and Dhar­men­dra Pun­wassee.